English Premier League viewing figures

Posted By: Shraddha Roy | July 18, 2017

English Premier League viewing figures are the full details of the channels that are broadcasting the matches, the analysis of why the viewing figures are going down, along with the details of NBC Sports Network, Sky Sports and BT Sports.

EPL is just around the corner and this is the time for everyone to start asking around where can they witness the awesomeness of the teams. This is where the broadcasting channels come into action. They have gained broadcasting rights for the Premier League and their channels air the live matches for the audience to enjoy at home. The truth be told, the revenue of these Premier League broadcasters and English premier league viewing figures are constantly going down due to some very common reasons. Due to increase in social media and millions of websites hosting live streams of matches, their English Premier League viewing figures are seeing an all-time low. Let’s know about them in details. Even though broadcasting authorities are different for every region in the world, the channels that will be broadcasting the EPL matches in the US, as well as the UK, has been discussed below.

Why the Television viewership is seeing a downward graph

English Premier League viewing figures

Even though the football fans love watching the match live on the big screen of a TV, most of them could hardly manage any time for the matches. In order to get the Premier League updates, they usually switch to their cellular devices and social media news. Research has shown that this has had a great impact on the current viewership and a negative one at that. Social media platforms, such as snap chat, Facebook and Twitter now come with live commentary of the matches. According to the research and experts, this is the main reason for this downfall.

Country

Language

Broadcasters

United States (including Puerto Rico & the U.S. Virgin Islands)

English
Spanish

NBC Sports Network
Telemundo

The United Kingdom

English

Sky Sports
BT Sport
BBC Sport (Highlights only)

NBC Sports Network (US)

NBC Sports Network (US)

In early 2015, NBC made a Six-year agreement, which is worth about $1 billion and retained the rights to the Premier League through the 2021-22 season. In the season of 2013-14, NBC and NBCSN’s season of Premier League games averaged 438,000 viewers a game. This was 118 percent more than from the audience on Fox Soccer, ESPN and ESPN2 the season before. As recorded, The average viewership per window on NBC/NBCSN/CNBC is known to be 420,000 viewers in the recent season. This record is down 18% from the further previous season which had almost 514,000 viewers per window. The records are still better than Fox/ESPN ‘s 2012-13 records which had an average viewership of only 220,000. While the stats are going nowhere but down, this season needs to have terrific viewership to help the stats grow.

Sky Sports (UK)

Sky Sports (UK)

According to recent studies, average viewing for Sky’s live TV channels fell 14% down the course of the 2016/17 Premier League season even though the broadcaster spent around 83% more for the most recent deal. Broadcasters Audience Research Board (Barb) revealed that a 6% decline in total viewing figures happened during the same time. Sky reportedly paid £4.2bn to gain the rights to show 126 live Premier League fixtures per year for the three consecutive seasons namely, 2016/17-2018/19. It means that each game has a cost of around £10m. Some of the lead Premier League commentators in Sky Sports’ channel are namely Martin Tyler, Rob Hawthorne, Bill Leslie as well as Alan Parry. Similarly, Co-commentators are Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Alan Smith, Niall Quinn, Andy Hinchcliffe and Davie Provan who do a great job.

BT Sports (UK)

If the rates keep dropping, the day wouldn’t be distant when television viewings will become obsolete because of the modern technologies. BT Sports paid £960m for its share of the rights to show 42 games every season has failed to see its investment pay off. The channel is seeing a decline of 2% in average viewing figures during the season in which Chelsea won the title, which is 2016-17. Ian Darke and Darren Fletcher are the two most awesome commentators for this channel who are helped by Co-commentators Steve McManaman and Andy Townsend.

English Premier League viewing figures are evidently looking very gloomy but there is a silver lining to the latest season of EPL is here. BBC Sport has been the Premier League’s free-to-air highlights broadcast partner in the UK. The bets are already being made, the odds are being taken care of. People are already predicting the results and much more. It looks like there may be a chance on a spike of those English Premier League viewing figures in 2017/18. As the matches progress, the Premier League fixtures and broadcasters will be updated here, so you must keep an eye on this space. If you have any queries, opinions or suggestions…please leave them down in the comment section below.